Rhapsody Streamnotes (June 2016)

Music Week

Been sick the last couple days. Probably just one of those passing bugs,
but it's really kicked my ass. I started a Weekend Roundup yesterday, but
couldn't finish (or even get very far into the thing). Lots to say about
the whole "Brexit" thing, but no point trying until I feel up to it.

Phil Overeem liked the extended 3-CD It's Too Late to Stop Now,
so I gave it a try. I can't say that all the redundancy is worth it, but
I can't find much fault either. It was enough to get me to do a deep dive
into all the Morrison I had missed -- almost everything from 1983-1999.
Turns out the best of that stretch is another live double. Only one I'm
still aware of missing is You Win Again (with Linda Gail Lewis).

Rhapsody Streamnotes is due by the end of the month, which is to say
Thursday. I don't feel up to wrapping it up right now, but hopefully will
recover somewhat by then. (Otherwise there's always backdating.)

Music Week

First, some business left over from yesterday's
Weekend Roundup post. David Everall wrote a long and informative
letter on the "Brexit" question. Main point: "both the linked to
article and your comments vastly underestimate the racist, xenophobic
nature of the 'leave' side of the debate here." I've added the whole
letter to the Comments section of the "faux blog" post. (If you
seriously want to comment on a post, best way is to send me email --
look for the "Contact" link.)

What Everall says makes sense to me, and not just because I'm tempted
to see a parallel in Donald Trump. I've probably tended to underestimate
Trump movement racism because I find his more conventional Republican
opponents so horrifying, but I do think that Laura Tillem has a point
when she says that the worst thing about a Trump election is that it
could happen (i.e., what it would show about the dim-witted viciousness
of the American people). The takeaway of a Trump election would surely
be that racism and xenophobia are acceptable, even majority, views,
and that's probably what people would glean if "Brexit" succeeds.
I can't say as I ever thought the latter would happen, as both right
and left have their own reasons for keeping the union together. But
I finally looked up some
polling, and the referendum looks to be very close, with either
outcome possible. But whereas, say, last night's NBA Finals Game was
so close I figured either side winning would be a meaningless fluke,
the "Brexit" is even close is already some kind of racist, chauvinist
triumph -- even if what it really suggests is the utter breakdown of
Britain's conservative elites' ability to keep their popular base in
line. Again, this runs parallel with America's conservative elites
inability to derail Trump. Whoever thought that decades of cynical
manipulation of racial and ethnic grudges would have led to this?

I also want to note that Al Leiderman passed away -- Uncle Al to
us. Born 1917, married Lillian Tillem for 74 years until her death in
2015, owned a laundry business and did fairly well. I met Lillian and
Al twice: in 2008 when they came to Kal Tillem's funeral, and in 2014
when Laura and I visited them in Palm Beach. Googling Al gets us to
several episodes of Old Jews Telling Jokes, like
this and
this and
this. Not great jokes, but more of a legacy than I usually find.

Fairly hefty list of newly rated albums this week, mostly drawn
from Christgau's Expert Witness (Aesop Rock, Chance the Rapper, Robbie
Fulks, Heartsrevolution, Mr. Lif, Thao, White Lung), a Jason Gubbels
SPIN World Report (Kel Assouf, Can't You Hear Me?, Romulo
Fróes, Elektro Hafiz, Ukandanz), Phil Overeem's latest
Good to My Earhole (Chance the Rapper, Elizabeth Cook), and Stereogum's
The 50 Best Albums of 2016 So Far (Chance the Rapper, Pinegrove, Pup,
Radiohead, Underworld). Looks like everyone (but me) loves Coloring
Book. I gave it three plays, bumping it a notch from my original grade.
I could imagine getting to like it somewhat more, but unless I figure out
how to burn a copy I doubt I'll bother. Too much mess, even before there's
too much God. Cook also got three plays, but they finally took. I got off
on the wrong track with Heartsrevolution, but the widget at
Noisey did the trick.

Taking my jazz queue pretty much in order, which leaves Tyshawn Sorey
up for next week. First three or four albums after I got back came in B
or worse. Wondered whether that was because I had spent the previous two
weeks listening to classics, but I'm pretty sure they weren't very good.

Looks like AMG dropped their anti-AdBlock hostageware. No idea why,
but I had decided to see how long I could live without it. Still, glad
to have access again.

Weekend Roundup

Travel disrupts my normal news browsing. I'm lucky to keep up with my
email, find it hard to write on notebook keyboards, never listen to the
radio, only watch TV when that's happening somewhere I'm staying (which
did get me some History Channel in CT, CNN in Buffalo, and Weather Channel
in AR). So I'm catching up here, and this week's links and comments are
pretty hit-and-miss.

David Atkins: Gun Violence Research: If Republicans in Congress Won't Do
It, California Will: One of the major problems with debates over gun
control is the general lack of serious research into the problem. We have
some rough numbers about total shootings but little else, in large part
because the NRA has worked very hard to keep any research from getting
funding. So if California does this, it will be a big help to anyone who
wants to base policy on real data.

Andrew Cockburn: Victory Assured on the Military's Main Battlefield --
Washington: Back in the 1980s the "star wars" program was originally
dubbed SDI, but I recall someone quipping that it should have been SFI,
for Strategic Funding Initiative. It is one of the Pentagon's more famous
multi-billion-dollar boondoggles, but far from alone. The military may or
may not get the wars they lobby for, but somehow they always manage to
get extravagant funding:

Inside the Pentagon, budget planners and weapons-buyers talk of the "bow
wave," referring to the process by which current research and development
initiatives, initially relatively modest in cost, invariably lock in
commitments to massive spending down the road. Traditionally, such waves
start to form at times when the military is threatened with possible
spending cutbacks due to the end of a war or some other budgetary crisis.
[ . . . ]

The latest nuclear buildup is only the most glaring and egregious
example of the present bow wave that is guaranteed to grow to monumental
proportions long after Obama has retired to full-time speechmaking. The
cost of the first of the Navy's new Ford Class aircraft carriers, for
example, has already grown by 20% to $13 billion with more undoubtedly
to come. The "Third Offset Strategy," a fantasy-laden shopping list of
robot drones and "centaur" (half-man, half-machine) weapons systems,
assiduously touted by Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, is similarly
guaranteed to expand stunningly beyond the $3.6 billion allotted to its
development next year.

So consider this essay a postscript to that work, my perhaps belated
realization that the age of acquiescence has indeed come to an end.
Millions are now, of course, feeling the Bern and cheering The Donald.
Maybe I should have paid more attention to the first signs of what was
to come as I was finishing my book: the Tea Party on the right, and on
the left Occupy Wall Street, strikes by low-wage workers, minimum and
living wage movements, electoral victories for urban progressives, a
surge of environmental activism, and the eruption of the Black Lives
Matter movement just on the eve of publication.

Also, after noting that not just the left but also the right has
rediscovered the class struggle of the 1930s:

Hillary Clinton is broadly distrusted. Sanders has consistently outpolled
her against potential Republican opponents for president because she is
indeed a limousine liberal whose career has burned through trust at an
astonishing rate. And more important than that, the rebellion that has
carried Sanders aloft is not afraid to put capitalism in the dock. Trump
is hardly about to do that, but the diseased state of the neoliberal
status quo has made him, too, a force to be reckoned with. However you
look at it, the age of acquiescence is passing away.

It should be added that while both right and left seek to build on
mass disposession, the left offers programs that appeal to those without
power, whereas the right seeks to redirect that fear and anger against
others, thereby insulating the wealthy from the wrath of the masses --
if not from the consequences of their own lust for violence.

Paul Krugman: Notes on Brexit: Eleven of them, concluding that Britain
would be slightly better off if they vote down the referendum threatening
to part company with the European Union. Still, the biggest point is that
exit would be bad for the City's financiers, which probably means as little
to the average Briton as Wall Street bonuses mean to most Americans. Beyond
that, he dismisses "claims that Britain, freed from EU rules, could achieve
spectacular growth via deregulation." I haven't read much on this topic
and don't have much to offer, other than the thought that exit might be
preferable if Britain was solidly to the left of Europe -- and therefore
able to use its independence to further equality -- but with the Tories
controlling Parliament that pretty clearly isn't the case. (On the other
hand, Scottish independence would likely have moved Scotland to the left,
although that wouldn't have been good for English Labour.)

Stephen Kinzer: Don't mythologize Ali's rage: Probably much more
worth reading on the late Muhammad Ali, but this is a good start,
focusing on his courageous political stances against racism at home
and imperialism abroad, and how recent eulogies tend to sanitize him
in a time when "his message is every bit as urgent today as it was
when he first began preaching it."

Ronald B Rapoport/Alan I Abramowitz/Walter J Stone: Why Trump Was
Inevitable: Nothing deep or surprising or even very informative
here. The authors merely did some polling among likely Republican
voters and found out that Trump was the most popular candidate,
beating all the others in one-on-one contests with Cruz (48%),
Rubio (43%), Carson (42%), Paul (37%), and Fiorina (36%) his closest
challengers -- the most notable finding is that among ten contenders
(the polling was done around Iowa caucus time) the lowest rating
belonged to Jeb Bush (31%), with Kasich and Christie just a whisker
better (32%). Another chart shows that Republicans thought Trump was
more likely to win in November than any other candidate (56%, vs.
44% for Cruz, 39% for Rubio, and a mere 13% for Bush). Other charts
show that Trump's signature issues (banning Muslims, building his
wall) were widely favored not just among Trump supporters but among
all Republicans. As I said, nothing revealing there (except perhaps
how doomed the Bush campaign was from the beginning).

Aaron Rupar: Senator Who Has Received More NRA Suport Than Anyone
Blames Obama for Orlando Shooting: John McCain, $7.7 million,
although most of that came during his 2008 presidential campaign, an
unfair advantage compared to all the other NRA stooges in Congress.
McCain's thinking here is that Obama opened the door for ISIS when
he oversaw the withdrawal of US occupation forces from Iraq. The
implication is that were it not for Obama's folly no one would have
heard of ISIS, so no deranged westerner could pledge allegiance to
the group in the midst of a killing spree. McCain may be one of the
last true believers in the magical powers of American military power,
or he may just have wanted US troops to stay in Iraq because their
presence sustains the war he so dearly loves. If one has to blame
Obama for this, it would make more sense to question his decision to
send troops back to Iraq (and on to Syria) to fight ISIS, reinforcing
the view that America is at war with Islam and has callous disregard
for anyone who gets in the way. Clearly, America's long and seemingly
intractable involvement in the Middle East's wars is leading to both
sides disrespecting and dehumanizing the other. I don't think either
Bush or Obama ever wished to paint their wars with racism but as those
wars drag on, with us and them killing the other, their remonstrations
are lost on demagogues like Trump. McCain, at least, has started to
walk back his charges. Still, he hasn't betrayed his sponsors.

Of course, what actually happened in Orlando doesn't fit at all well
with the preconceived notions of someone like McCain. That the shooter
was born a Muslim and had heard of ISIS seems almost incidental, even
as that he was so filled with rage and armed with an assault rifle is
so quintessentially American. For a profile, see
'Always Agitated. Always Mad': Omar Mateen, According to Those Who Knew
Him.

Trump is setting modern records for political toxicity -- at least for
a major-party candidate this far out from an election. Seventy percent
of Americans surveyed in an ABC News/Washington Post poll out this week
had an unfavorable opinion of Trump, up 10 points over the past month.
The poll showed Trump's favorable rating cratering at 29 percent, down
from 37 percent last month. [ . . . ]
But it's not just the overall unfavorable numbers -- it's the intensity
of the antipathy toward Trump, and the lack of enthusiasm for him. In
the ABC News/Washington Post poll, 56 percent of respondents had a
"strongly unfavorable" opinion of Trump, compared to just 15 percent
who had a "strongly favorable" opinion.

Shepard's piece was cited by
Paul Woodward: Trump's plan for winning if he loses, on how Trump's
"already crafting a plan to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat -- not
by winning but election but by turning his campaign experience into the
launchpad for his next commercial venture."

Krugman's Truthiness

I wanted to write about this scurrilous piece
[Paul
Krugman: The Truth About the Sanders Movement]
before my trip -- it was posted May 23 -- but
never found the time (and my tools weren't much help). The problem isn't
that Krugman claims the high ground of truth, although that's usually a
tell of an impending bullshit dump. It starts with a quite from Christopher
Achen and Larry Bartels charging that "Mr. Sanders's support is concentrated
not among liberal ideologues but among disaffected white men." Rather than
finding Sanders' support from "disaffected white men" a damning fault, I'd
argue that it is a remarkable breakthrough: it shows that a demographic that
has lamentably trended Republican in recent years -- indeed one that seems
to be the not just the core but the limits of Trump's constituency -- is
less monolithic and more open to a progressive candidate whose articulation
of not just their interests is free of the Republicans' customary chauvinism.
That sounds like a win to me -- one that Clinton should study and aspire to.
As for Sanders' shortfall "among liberal ideologues," that may be because
differences between pro-labor social democrats (leftists) and liberals run
deep. The latter have always been pro-business individualists -- something
partially bridged by the New Deal but which has come roaring back with the
New Democrats' hook, line and sinker embrace of the chilling economic
doctrines of neoliberalism.

Krugman goes on to observe that "Sandersism has been an assemblage of
people with a variety of motives," and offers this taxonomy:

Genuine idealists: "maybe because they're very young" and
"ready to dismiss practical arguments about why all their dreams can't
be accomplished in a day."

Romantics: "shades over into something that's less about
changing society than about the fun and ego gratification of being
part of The Movement"; but "when reality began to set in, all too
many romantics reacted by descending into bitterness, with angry
claims that they were being cheated."

Purists: "those for whom political activism is less about
achieving things and more about striking a personal pose; "Naderites
in 2000; the results of that venture don't bother them, because it
was never really about the results, only about affirming personal
identity."

CDS victims: "Clinton-haters, deep in the grip of Clinton
Derangement Syndrome"; "Sanders has gotten a number of votes from
conservative Democrats who are voting against her, not for him, and
for sure there are liberal supporters who have absorbed the same
message, even if they don't watch Fox News."

Salon des Refuses: "policy intellectuals who have for
whatever reason been excluded from the inner circles of the Democratic
establishment, and saw Sanders as their ticket to the big time."

I suppose Krugman would consign me to the "purists." I did, after all,
vote for Nader in 2000, and have been consistently critical of many of the
policy choices made by the Clinton and Obama administrations: especially
how they continued with little (Obama) or no (Clinton) critical thought
the neocon establishment's imperialistic foreign policy, but also how they
(again, Clinton more blatantly) have repeatedly slagged their voters to
advance the interests of their financiers. But where Krugman sees me as
merely "affirming personal identity," I see real and substantial policy
differences, especially regarding war/peace and inequality -- easily the
two most important political issues we face today. Implicit in Krugman's
argument that we should make pragmatic choices is the assumption that
policy options like peace and equality aren't possible, but his logic
is circular: as long as we keep picking politicians (like the Clintons)
who believe that war and inequality are inevitable, they will be. Sanders
offered the first explicit challenge to this paradigm since Nader -- sure,
Obama offered vague hope for change but that didn't amount to much -- so
my view is that it would have been dishonest and cowardly not to vote for
Sanders over Clinton when given the chance.

Krugman goes on to speculate that "Purists and CDSers won't back Clinton,
but they were never going to anyway." Maybe I'm not such a purist after all,
as I've been planning on voting for Clinton (assuming she is nominated) vs.
the Republican nominee all along. Granted, I know and respect people who
say they won't -- they don't want to feel responsible for the next war she
blunders into, and I have to admit that the odds of that happening are scary
high. But one lesson I learned from the Nader debacle in 2000 was that most
of the people we realistically hope to support leftist candidates will in
the end vote Democratic anyway. Sometimes you have to support them in order
to get them to support you. Indeed, most of the people I know in Kansas who
are planning on supporting third-party candidates will be watching the polls
and voting for Clinton if it gets close. Clinton carrying Kansas won't make
much difference in the electoral college, but a Democratic win would chip
away at the myth of invincibility that helps the Republicans dominate (and
ruin) the state. Even "purists" realize that electing lesser evils than Sam
Brownback would help reduce the damages caused by Republican extremism.

I have less to say about Krugman's other categories, especially idealists
and romantics, the sort of fuzzy terms use to dismiss people who haven't yet
degraded into embittered cynics. I find it hard to believe that any Sanders
supporters are as deluded as the self-described progressives who profess
that Hillary is (perhaps secretly) one with them -- and I say that knowing
a few that believe just that (including at least four old friends from my
recent road trip).

Some while back Krugman argued that Obamacare was practically equivalent
to single-payer, and I more/less bought his argument. The key equivalency
there is that both aim at universal coverage, and my takeaway (which, by
the way was also Bernie's) was that it was important to support Obamacare
because it would establish universal coverage as basic public policy. Still,
Obamacare wasn't as effective at realizing universal coverage as single-payer
would have been, and it left every facet of the profit-seeking health care
industry intact, in some cases slightly more regulated but in most respects
as greedy as ever. And it also meant that Democrats were taking any prospect
for a much better health care system off the table, out of their platform,
and moving it into "pie in the sky" territory. Krugman seems to be arguing
for a similar equivalency between Hillary and Bernie, saying that for all
practical purposes neither will achieve more than the other, but at least
Hillary is possible (and necessary given that the alternative is Trump),
whereas Bernie is off limits, tempting us with more than we can possibly
hope for. Some of my friends think the same thing, although Krugman is
exceptional in that he claims the laws of economics disprove Bernie --
although few things are more deeply rooted in politics than the so-called
laws of economics.

It might be amusing to work out a similar taxonomy of Clinton supporters,
but it's likely to be equally misleading. There can't be all that many
neocons or bank lobbyists, although their money speaks volumes. Mostly she
leads the timid, promising them little and, if the past history of campaign
populism from Wilson to Obama holds, delivering even less. The one thing
you have to credit the Republicans with is that even in abject defeat after
colossal failure they strut like they rule the world and cower the mainstream
media into fawning cowardice. But part of the problem is that the Democrats
have never been able to distinguish friends from foes. How else can you
explain them blaming Nader for Gore's loss in 2000, as opposed to packing
the Supreme Court, or the media's eagerness to treat the teetotaling GW
Bush as America's favorite drinking buddy while never noticing Dick Cheney
lurking behind the scenes. And could Bush have done so much damage had no
Democrats joined in his tax cuts, deregulation, "no child left behind,"
Patriot Act, or invasion of Iraq? As with Clinton's NAFTA, "crime bill,"
"welfare reform," balanced budgets, and repeal of Glass-Steagall, often
the most effective enemy of Democratic voters is their own leaders. It's
not clear to me how Hillary, whose career is dogged by bad decisions,
unreliable allies, and one stupid scandal after another, breaks that
mold.

Music Week

That is, nothing new rated in the last 15 days, while I've been
busy driving around half of the the eastern half of the United States
(KS, MO, IL, IN, KY, WV, MD, DE, NJ, NY, CT, MA, PA, OH, AR -- twice
missed OK by only 1 mile). Took me a couple extra days to get this
post together, so I can report the unpacking, way down below. Also
didn't manage to buy a single CD -- I remember past trips of similar
length where I brought back a hundred or more. As it was, the only
record store I even saw was CDepot in College Park, Maryland: drove
by and meant to return but didn't manage it. (I don't think I've ever
been there without spending at least $200, so it would have been the
one store to go to if I managed to go to one.) Still, I hardly ever
buy things these days, so that streak would likely have fallen.

I got a rude awakening when I got back: All Music Guide has added
some programming to prevent you (or at least me) from seeing any of
their pages. Their gripe is that they've detected that I'm using Add
Blocker, and they're insisting that either I disable it or "continue
with a paid subscription." The $12 annual "ad-free" subscription is
actually pretty modest considering how much I've used their website
in the past, but the way they're going about this is pretty nasty.
I also wonder what happens when they realize I'm also running NoScript
and have 11 of their 15 JavaScript domains blocked -- all sorts of
hideous, annoying, possibly dangerous shit.

So I balked, then turned to All About Jazz to at least get the
musician lineup and song list on the album I was streaming, only to
find that they want "$20 and we'll hide those six pesky Google ads
that appear on every page for a full year!" That doesn't sound like
nearly as good a deal. (OK, review-wise AAJ is a cut above AMG, but
it's less useful discographically, harder to search, more confusing,
and it's only jazz.) They also have a "sign up and become a member"
feature, like (or unlike, I'm not sure) AMG introduced a while back.
AAJ doesn't charge for membership -- looks like it mostly lets them
spam you, and lets you contribute free data to them. But then I'm
only allowing 6/12 AAJ script domains, and fear that funding their
"website expansion" will add more to the clutter than to content or
accessibility (I understand there are some cases where JavaScript
might be useful, but all this promiscuous script cross-referencing
is a plague on the web).

AMG and AAJ are valuable websites, and it can't be easy funding
them. But they're also profit-making companies, and they are at
least partly built on contributed content (no idea how much if
anything they pay writers -- M. Ricci has offered to publish me
but hasn't offered to pay me anything). So it's hard to say that
adding new revenue streams will offer anything in return to anyone
but the owners. And while some websites may be worth paying for,
as a practical matter most people cannot afford or justify more
than a few such subscriptions. I expect that the effect there is
that those sites that succeed at subscriptions will crowd out any
others. That may indeed be part of the rationale. But it should
also make those sites less popular, and ultimately less valuable.
I don't know what the answer is (other than the currently utopian
one of publicly supported democratic sites; free markets work OK for
rivalrous goods, but are pretty much impossible for non-rivalrous
ones).

One thing I haven't tried yet is an "anti-adblock killer" like
Reek.
For one thing, it adds to the arms race between between sites that
try to seize control of your browser running on your computer and
your basic right to defend yourself against their attacks. For
another, it seems to depend on
Greasemonkey, a piece of possibly invidious technology that
I've never gotten the hang of. (Basically, it allows you to write
or use scripts that change the way your browser works, for better
or perhaps more often worse.)

Two more bits of news on returning:

I see that Rhapsody has decided to rename itself
Napster, thereby
throwing away all the free promo work I've done for the streaming
service since
2007. They're promising the same service for the same rates, so
this shouldn't be as disruptive as when they switched to Flash for
their streaming layer (what a headache that was). But it probably
means I'll change the name of my monthly compendium of music notes
to something else, and almost certainly that won't be Napster
Streamnotes.

Speaking of profit-seeking websites, the people who gave you that
free resume-sharing site LinkedIn are cashing in on all your data and
loyalty to Microsoft for
$26.2 billion. The likelihood that they're going to share any of
that bounty with you is nil, and the chances the site will become any
less parasitic or predatory aren't much better. This is, of course,
just a bigger version of the fortune AMG and AAJ are aiming for, and
it's easy to see their recent member programs and ad extortion as
efforts to improve their market value -- i.e., as signs that the end
is near. It may be time to start thinking about new website projects
again.

Lots of ideas pop into my head while I'm driving. I met John Chacona
in Erie, PA, and one thing he was interested in was what I was my music
cases and what I was listening to on the road. I have two cases with 80
CDs each, plus one more with 40, so I usually take 200 with me. I used
to load these things for each trip, but had gotten lazy and had only
shuttled a few discs in and out each trip: the first things to go were
current jazz I was working on, then I generally cut back on jazz and
hip-hop, often in favor of old rhythm & blues, rock & roll, and
country -- those seem to work best for driving, although I preferred
jazz in the motel room back when I thought to bring a boombox along.
(My wife's iPod would eliminate the need for the boombox, but she
doesn't always come along.) So I resolved two things: one is to jot
down a list of the CDs for this trip; the other is to unpack the cases
when I get back, so I can start fresh next time. What follows is the
list, with date/label data from the database (which doesn't always
match the disc, especially in cases where the CD replaced an LP).
Multiple disc sets are noted, and something like "1/3CD" means I only
had one of three CDs.

The Rough Guide to Highlife [2nd Edition] (1969-84 [2012], World Music Network)

Scratchin': The Wild Jimmy Spruill Story (1956-63 [2014], GVC, 2CD)

This Is Ska! (1962-70 [1997], Music Club)

Wall of Sound: The Very Best of Phil Spector 1961-1966 (1961-66 [2011], Phil Spector/Legacy)

Not necessarily the best 200 CDs I could have taken. There's some amount
of accident and drift here, but they're all A- or better (often much better).
I probably played a little more than half of these on this trip. I can't
say as I was ever disappointed.